


Do You Hear What I Hear?

by Grevling



Category: Better Off Ted
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:14:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grevling/pseuds/Grevling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One screaming, crying, holiday-scented employee was par for the course, but two?  Two was probably cause for concern.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do You Hear What I Hear?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fiddlingfrog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiddlingfrog/gifts).



The employees of Veridian Dynamics (#14 on the Fortune 500, #2 on Interpol's list of most-investigated companies, and gunning for number one on both) should probably be more closely supervised than they are. If anything, its inability to coordinate competent memo-writers, leading to such catastrophes as the bloody Jell-O Coup Thursday uprising and the remarkably embarrassing company Bareballs tournament, should have been reason enough to rethink the leadership hierarchy. 

Unfortunately, a steady salary and access to semi-illegal scientific supplies is enough to sway almost anyone, and Dr. Bhamba (last name classified due to the treaty recently signed with Singapore), being less concerned with stability than most, signed up without even a backwards glance. 

This has been widely regarded as perhaps the greatest mistake modern science has ever recorded. 

\---

It all began on a rather calm Thursday afternoon – by Veridian standards, at least. Nothing had blown up that couldn't be contained to a single floor, and no one had contracted a tropical illness so far. The Hazmat suits were still in their lockers, no one had set fire to their cubicle. 

Calm. 

This should have been the first warning sign, but unfortunately Ted was having an off day. It was the second anniversary of his ex-wife Stacy's first decision to jet off to save a third-world country instead of staying with her family, and he was too busy thinking up insulting names for Kenyan orphans in his head to notice that everything was going entirely too smoothly. 

At least until the second employee ran by him, screaming nigh-incoherently at the top of his lungs, trailing a faint smell of evergreen trees and peppermint. Ted paused, sniffing contemplatively as he watched the poor man sprint through what Veronica not-so-fondly referred to as “the drone zone,” following the path created by the first woman, who had shed chunks of holly all over the floor. 

Ted sighed, dismissing all thoughts of undeserving Kenyan orphans and white guilt complexes, and instead turned toward Veronica's office instead. One screaming, crying, holiday-scented employee was par for the course, but two? Two was probably cause for concern. 

 

* * *

 

“We're not testing some sort of Christmas bomb, are we?” Ted asked as he burst through the door, nearly tripping over the wiry guts of some sort of mechanical beast in the doorway. And were those _feathers_?

Veronica never even looked up from her computer. “Whatever joke it is you're trying to make, I'm far too busy and important to find it funny, so just turn right around on your polished Italian shoes and make for the door.”

Ted paused in the act of disentangling the laces of his, okay yes, very expensive and imported shoes (didn't he deserve the best? That's a rhetorical question, of course he did) from some sort of control box that seemed to be attached to a distressingly lifelike duckbill, and dragged the whole metallic contraption, sparking and quacking, over to Veronica's desk. 

“Okay, first of all, I don't even _want_ to know what this is, or why it seems to have our People-Skinning Laser - patent pending - built into its eyes, and second, there is definitely a joke I could make here involving Christmas missiles and toes, but that's not what I'm going for at all.” He dropped into the chair in front of her desk, scooting it just far enough to the side to avoid the trap door hidden underneath. “Two employees just ran past me, screaming Christmas carols at the tops of their lungs, and they both smelled like something I'd hang from the rear view mirror in my car to get rid of that gassy grandma smell that always seems to appear on hot days.”

Veronica finally looked up from her computer long enough to fix him with a piercing glare. “As fascinating as I find your convoluted metaphors, I can feel my will to live draining away. Get to the point.”

“The point is that we have screaming employees running around! Doesn't that worry you?” 

Veronica cocked her head at him, like a deadly, curious Springer Spaniel. 

Ted thought it through. “It's... going to lose the company money! Yes, if our employees are traumatized by Santa's insane elves sprinting through their workspace, they're not going to be able to work!”

Veronica huffed and through up her hands. “Ugh, _fine_ , whatever. Everything seems to upset you peons, doesn't it? Even the slightest change can really throw you for a loop. It's infuriating.”

“Veronica, the last 'slight change' we had was when the memo came around saying that the Fourth of July lunch menu included, and I quote, 'hamburger panties.'”

She shrugged. “They tasted fine anyway, didn't they?”

“Yeah, but I was picking lace out of my molars for a week. We really need to stop hiring high school dropouts to write these memos"

"Oh, we stopped that last quarter. It's all about trained apes now - turns out they're terrible at Shakespeare, but not too bad at transcription. And bananas are a hell of a lot cheaper than whatever it is we pay you drones in.” She glanced dismissively at him. “Beer and nudie magazines, I suspect."

Ted rolled his eyes. “Back to the point – what is it that's making our employees go crazy for Christmas? And how do we stop it?”

“I'm sure I don't know, and I'm even more positive that I don't care, but your girlfriend probably has a good idea. She came in here earlier with some crap about how the company isn't getting into the holiday spirit enough.”

Ted blushed and stammered, “She's not-- do you mean Linda? 'Cause we're not, I mean...”

"Oh shut up, Ted. Honestly, if she's not jumping your train out of this station, she's dumber than I thought she was. And that's saying something. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have some _actual_ work to do. Please disentangle yourself from the cyber-duck prototype and go talk through your feelings with someone else." Dismissal clearly delivered, she turned back to her computer, ignoring the small explosion from the kicked-aside cyber-duck as Ted fought his way free of it and out of her office. 

 

* * *

 

Walking up behind Linda, Ted cleared his throat softly. She whipped around and smiled tightly up at him, covering the sketch pad awkwardly with one hand and her elbow, obscuring what looked like a drawing of Ted himself in a Santa beard. "Hi, Ted!" she squeaked, trying to shuffle it behind her. 

"Hi... Linda." Ted shook his head. It was always better not to ask, really. He'd learned that much, at least. "So, what's the drawing?" Or he thought he'd learned. 

"Nothing! Absolutely nothing, don't worry about it." Linda's voice was frantic now, and she'd dropped both her keyboard and her purse on top of the sketchbook.

"Right, because nothing bad ever happens after a sentence like that. But I actually do have a question for you - did you see anything weird come through earlier? Like, say, a man screaming "Jingle Bells" as loud as he can, smelling like wintergreen? That's the kind of weird I'm talking about."

She wrinkled up her nose at him, "Yes, actually, I did. I mean, I didn't think it was too weird, since it is only a week before Christmas, and I've definitely seen weirder, but now that you mention it, it did seem a little odd. Why?"

"Well, I asked Veronica, and she seems to think that you might have had something to do with it. Any reason why that might be true?"

Linda's face went through an astounding array of emotions in rapid succession - confusion, contemplation, realization, horror, embarrassment, and a special emotion Ted had taken to calling "Veridian resignment." He saw it a lot. "He _swore_ to me that nothing bad would happen!" Linda shouted, pushing past Ted and making for the elevator. "I'm going _kill_ that bald little weasel!"

Ted jogged after her. "Care to let the rest of the class in on the joke? 'Cause you know me - I love a good weasel vengeance joke as much as the next guy." He tried to grin winningly at her as he squeezed through the elevator doors before she could shut them in his face. His smile could usually make her at least a little less homicidal. 

Linda sighed, rolling her eyes and violently punching the button for the science labs. "Dr. Bhamba and I have been working on a Christmas-ifying ray to use on the office, since the company thinks it's a 'waste of resources' to hang up decorations. Even, god forbid, for us to listen to Christmas carols in our own cubicles! All I ask for is just one little radio, maybe the chance to sing "Holly Jolly Christmas" with my coworkers, hang up a little tinsel, but nooooooo." By now her hands flailing so wildly that Ted was backed into the corner of the elevator, gripping the handrail as if it would save him from a slap worse than death.

Linda took note of his terrified stare. "Sorry," she said, crossing her hands, "it's just Christmas is an important holiday to me, you know? It used to be the only day we got off from working in the cheese mines until Jesse Williams' birthday." At Ted's blank stare, she elaborated, "Jesse Williams? Inventor of the assembly-line cheese factory? Ugh, _anyway_ , Christmas is really important to me, and the company doesn't seem to care at all! So I went and talked to Veronica about it, and after I fought off the cyber-duck and saved her from being skinned to death, she said she would allow me to decorate, but only if it could be done as a test for one of the ongoing projects."

Ted put his face into his hand, already dreading where this was going.

"Okay, yes, _now_ we can look back on this and realize that it was probably a bad idea, but at the time it seemed like a win for me! I don't ever get to win, Ted! So anyway, Phil and Lem are working on some sort of boring energy drink, so I went to Doctor Bhamba - _I KNOW, TED_ \- but he's working on this emotion-ray that can make you experience whatever is input into it, and it sounded perfect, right? That way we could decorate our brains instead of the office! Win/win!"

"Except whatever Doctor Bhamba works on inevitably becomes a device worthy of any number of Bond villains, no matter what he's working on." The elevator bumped gently to a stop as Ted rubbed his temples wearily. "Don't you remember the unfrayable shoelaces he developed that also doubled as foot-amputating garrotes when exposed to sunlight?"

The elevator dinged, sounding eerily like sleigh bells, and Linda glanced up fearfully. "Oh, god, I think it's spreading." She grabbed Ted's hand and hauled him down the corridor toward Doctor Bhamba's office, which was emitting multi-colored twinkly beams of light from under the door. "We've got to stop this before the whole city is buried under a wave of unstoppable Christmas cheer!" Ted could barely hear her over the blaring sounds of singing chipmunks and horse hooves and other, horrible festive sounds. 

Linda released Ted's hand to slap her own hands over her ears. "I HATE THOSE F-," Ted missed the next couple of words as the song reached a new crescendo of falsetto singing, "CHIPMUNKS!" Linda screamed, face flushed as she kicked in the door. 

Or tried to, at least. Instead, her foot rebounded off the reinforced steel, and she landed flat on the floor, Christmas lights twinkling on her pained face. Ted sacrificed one ear as he reached out to pop the door open and saw Doctor Bhamba, bald head gleaming with red, green, and white lights, standing over an intimidating-looking switchboard, cackling gleefully to himself behind a pair of industrial headphones. Doubled over by the door, clutching his head in pain, Ted glanced between what was obviously the emotion ray in the corner and Linda, who was army-crawling across the floor on her elbows, hands still firmly clamped over her ears. 

Hoping that his eyebrows were as expressive as Veronica had always creepily assured him they were, Ted wiggled them at Linda and at the emotion ray in turn, then at the power cord running from it to the wall. Linda nodded, then, yodeling a war cry audible even over the singing rodents, she leaped up and, with little thought for life or limb, tackled the demonic ray to the ground, bringing the high-pitched caroling to a screeching, blissful halt. 

Ted stared at her. 

Linda extracted herself from the bent remains of the emotion ray, dusting off her blouse and shrugging. "What?" she asked defensively. "I was just going with your plan!"

"That wasn't the plan!" Ted shouted back, pointing to the power plug. "I was trying to get you to _unplug it_ , not treat it like a linebacker!"

"First of all, I definitely tackled that thing like a quarterback, Mr. I-Know-Sports, and secondly, how was I supposed to know? It's not like your eyebrows can talk."

"That's not--"

"Excuse me?" 

Linda and Ted stopped in their tracks, Linda still attempting to extract bits of wire from her hair, and turned to face Doctor Bhamba. "Why, may I ask," he continued, voice trembling, "have you decided to break into my lab and destroy possibly my sexiest piece of work in years?" He rushed over to his fallen ray, stroking its casing. Linda backed away uncomfortably. 

"I'm really sorry, Doctor Bhamba," she began, and he turned on her. 

"And YOU! You're the one who wanted me to do this in the first place! I do not even celebrate this holiday, but no! You wanted me to give up my dreams of implanting lust for my beautiful body into the minds of every person in the building just so that you could have a jolly-holly Christmas, or what have you! Why would you do this?" 

Linda's face was a masterpiece of shame and disgust, and Ted stepped in before she could do any more damage. "We're so sorry, Doctor Bhamba, but your ray was driving people insane. There are at least two people holed up in the handicapped bathroom on the second floor, humming Christmas carols to each other and talking about gingerbread houses to anyone who dares to open the door. We had to shut it down before it got worse!"

"Besides," said Linda, "that Chipmunks Christmas album is the _worst_. Why on earth would you pick that one to use to spread holiday cheer? Even my grandma hates that CD, and she likes talking to telemarketers."

Bhamba shrugged. "I could not give up my dreams of world domination so easily, could I? From all my research, it seemed that these 'Chipmunks' you so loathe are the greatest weapon Christmas has ever given us. How could I not use them?"

Ted glanced at Linda, stumped, and then shrugged. "All right, fair point. But remember our discussion last month? You're not supposed to be making world domination plans on company time. That is strictly classified in the employee handbook as a hobby, and when do hobbies happen?"

Bhamba looked downtrodden. "At _home_ ," he droned obediently. "I am very sorry, Ted. I did not mean to fail you. Next time my plans will be extracurricular, and grander than ever!" He spread his arms wide, a beaming smile already overtaking his face at the thought. 

"That's not... that's not what he- Oh, forget it." Linda threw up her hands in defeat and stalked out the door.

Ted sighed. "Thank you for understanding, Doctor Bhamba. Now, do you think those two employees are going to recover, or should I be tracking down a nice Santa's village in which they can live out the rest of their days?"

"Oh no, no, they should be all right within a few hours. The smell may take longer to wear off, but they can serve as potpourri until then, no? Such a useful machine!" He gazed sadly down at his shattered ray once more, then brightened. "Ah, well. I shall have to make it even more powerful next time. This is what science is about! Success, failure, robots, and then even bigger successes!" 

Ted clapped him on the back. "And that, my friend, is why I like and fear you. Mostly fear. Now why don't you go ahead and clean this up and we can forget it ever happened, all right?" Bhamba nodded and pulled a whirring, blinking machine that Ted desperately hoped was a vacuum out of a cabinet and started prodding buttons on it, and Ted took that as his cue to leave. 

He found Linda waiting in the elevator, holding the door. "Thanks for your help, Ted," she said, pressing the button for their floor. "It was a dumb, idea, I know, but I just couldn't help myself. It's just, it's Christmas, and I..."

"I know," he said, bumping her shoulder. "And you know, if you're really missing Christmas decorating that much, how about you come over and help me and Rose set up the tree tonight? I can never hang the ornaments quite right, and she's not tall enough to fix them for me."

Linda smiled up at him and bumped back. "I'd like that, Ted. Thank you." 

And the elevator doors closed on two people with relieved smiles who _definitely_ didn't have falsetto Christmas tunes stuck in their heads. 

At all.


End file.
